Funding Environmental Awareness through the Arts

by Bethany Wall, Mertz Gilmore Foundation

Whether re-imagining public squares in Brooklyn, creating habitat restoration sculpture in Montana, or addressing watershed management in the Pacific Northwest, artists from varying perspectives and disciplines are making connections to issues that the environmental funding community cares about deeply. Settings for this work stretch from rural to suburban to urban, and the projects themselves take many forms. They may comment on environmental degradation, provide a moment of whimsy or reflection in an unexpected nook, or create a link to natural ecosystems that have become invisible to many people. Quite often, they do all three.

Most interesting is how artists use their creativity to awaken a largely unengaged public to the fragile environmental balance within which we live, and to reconnect the human species to the natural and frequently abused systems upon which a sustainable future depends. At the October 2003 Grantmakers in the Arts conference held in Seattle, Washington, funders and artists discussed the environmental values underlying their work and compared notes on the diverse issues addressed within some of the artists’ projects. A few examples included water management, sprawl, habitat restoration and sustainable consumption. (As if that weren’t exciting enough, several lucky participants witnessed an artist-designed stormwater retention system located in a city neighborhood during a record 5.5” rainfall. Worked like a charm.)

Interested funders will continue pursuit of this interdisciplinary action with a goal of leveraging the fruitful edges of the issue-based “ecosystems” within which we, as funders, operate. In the natural world, edges of ecosystems are rich, diverse treasure troves bursting with life and dynamism. We should begin viewing these edges not as barriers but as building blocks toward related funding goals.

Interested in learning more as the story develops? Contact Bethany Wall (bwall@mertzgilmore.org).

Bethany Wall is Program Officer at the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

"Waterworks Gardens" by Lorna Jordan